


darkness and beauty of stars was on my mouth

by elynross



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-23
Updated: 2006-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elynross/pseuds/elynross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The New Corinthian is not the Old Corinthian, nor are their dreams the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darkness and beauty of stars was on my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Mary Crawford for assuring me that there was sense to be had in my words; and to merriman for the opportunity to write Sandman again.
> 
> Written for merriman

 

 

By dreams, I'm still called the _New_ Corinthian, although few enough address me to my face. In nightmares, dreamers almost never notice, even those who have a long history with me _(him)_ ; they're too busy screaming and fighting their way to wakefulness to notice any subtle differences. In all ways that matter to them, there are no differences: I eat their vision, leaving them in the dark, and then they see nothing. I take their dreams and reshape them into nightmare. It is what I have always done; it is my nature. That much has not changed.

They tell me that in some distant future beyond dreaming, I'll become just "The Corinthian," but dreams and nightmares have very long memories. Still, in their eyes I see fear, but it is inherited fear, unearned -- although I wonder if there is a difference, even there. Only the few new creations that have been shaped since our master returned fear me as I am now, rather than as I was - but the others will learn. In my own way, I am much more horrifying than I was before I was reshaped; I am no longer distracted by the longings and desires that bent me before.

Sometimes I can almost remember when I was not myself, when I was the other, Old me, my own dark reflection, a creature too damaged and petty to survive. In a way, it's my own personal nightmare, because when I almost remember, I almost understand; I can almost taste what it was he was seeking, what led him to madness of the most mundane sort. At its worst, it makes my mouths water.

He almost found what he sought in the eyes of the god, Loki, but even that was finite; it was the closest he ever came to satisfaction, but even that left him wanting. He craved a taste of infinity, of eternal Being, but every morsel he consumed only made the hunger worse, and drove him further and further from his purpose. His need drove him to learn to kill, as if the spilling of life, the coarse mutilation of flesh, could feed a hunger rooted in something he could never touch.

He wanted what he could never have: a taste of the Endless, perhaps to even become as the one who shaped him, able to fashion nightmares of his own devising. To become something other, something _more_ than he was created. Is it irony that in being shaped myself, I have reshaped him? Out with the Old, in with the New...

I imagine that before he was unmade, before I was reshaped, when he looked into our master's eyes, he saw only stars marring the darkness, beautiful, breath-taking, never-ending darkness of the sort of which he could only...dream. The Old Corinthian saw this darkness and never stopped wanting to have it for my own, to stop the light that marred the deep night of His eyes. Sometimes I remember that he dreamed of a day when Dream became Nightmare in truth and totality, as Delight had become Delirium, a time when nightmares would walk in waking day, and all limitations would be removed.

When Dream vanished from the Dreaming, the Old Corinthian took it upon himself to make this dream of his come true. He strode out of dreams to walk the earth in the bodies of men, learning to take their lives, instead of their dreams. In making their nightmares come true, bringing them to life in the shape of death, he lost his purpose; he reshaped himself and became mundane. He thought that the crass mutilation of blood and bones would surpass the artistry of manipulating and transforming dreams, but he could never see, as I can, that it is only in dreams, and dreams become nightmare, that we have meaning. That we have any power at all. I am as I am made; I have power only through Him who made me, and I lack nothing. Nothing at all.

They would never have let me have His eyes, the eyes of the creator and shaper of dreams; I know this. But this is another thing I dream of, if dreams can in fact dream themselves, and sometimes it's unclear whether it is a dream of now, or only a dream of then, of before, a remnant of the Old remaining in the New, shaping _my_ dreams into nightmare, still. And the dream is this: to see as He saw, in His last moments. To consume Him, take Him into myself, to use all He knew of the darkness of dreams to become the nightmare He wanted me to be. To have his Vision to guide me from within. Would it be a dream fulfilled, or would it be nightmare? And can you have one, without the other?

The Old Corinthian abandoned dream and nightmare for fleshy pleasures of blood and murder. He was an aesthete in his way, as I am in mine, but ultimately he painted his own selfish horror for all to view, taking and possessing, walking out of dreams to create visions of darkness that caused horror and despair, but in a way all too permanent. Dreams, and their dark reflections, are made to be impermanent, to live off hopes and fears, to be realized or dreaded, sometimes in equal measure. My role is not to bring them to life, or to death; I merely serve as a beast of burden, if you will, something to ride them, and be ridden in turn, to carry them into their own inner darkness where they fear to dwell. Some never return, remaining sightless, without vision; others defeat me and overcome the fears that blind them. My purpose is to provide the opportunity; I never make the choice. My will is not my own.

He? Did not want to be anyone's servant; he wanted to be the shaper, not the shaped. I, on the other hand, serve my master with a glad, dark heart. I find nothing shameful in serving Dream -- or his dreamers. So many that I haunt live meaningless lives -- lives without vision, even before I take it from them. Those that cannot withstand me I feed on, until there is nothing left for them but nightmare. But others are strong, and profound; spurred by my riding their dreams into nightmare, they reshape _themselves_ , wresting their vision back and leaving me behind, leaving me to my purpose, having outrun me.  No longer needing me.

My purpose is all that I need.

Before he was my master, when he was still the child, I held him in my arms, held his soft, warm, helpless, oh so human body, and I saw him transform, reshape himself into the pale Master of dreams. I watched the child's eyes, which I did not eat, which I was not allowed, such tender morsels, become the endlessly deep, dark eyes of my lord. The light went out of them, and the stars came in, and they became my world. 

But I don't crave them. I don't.  
   
 

 

 

 


End file.
